In a statement on his Shareholders’ Square Table site, Icahn basically said he was “flattered but do not get up early enough in the morning to accept this opportunity.” He also said he was “extremely surprised” that Trump chose to run, and “even more surprised” at his name being mentioned for Treasury Secretary.

Despite declining the hypothetical nomination, Icahn did have some kind words for Trump’s mention of a “big fat bubble” due to low interest rates. From Icahn’s site:

I personally believe we are sailing in dangerous unchartered waters. I can only hope we get to shore safely. Never in the history of the Federal Reserve have interest rates been artificially held down for so long at the extremely low rates existing today. I applaud Donald for speaking out on this issue – more people should.

No word on if a Treasury Secretary Icahn would have kept Hamilton on the $10 and dumped Jackson from the $20…

Move over Alexander Hamilton. A woman will soon grace the $10 bill

The recent push to put a woman’s portrait on American paper currency has finally paid off.

The Treasury on Wednesday announced that the $10 bill will get a makeover, and that a woman will appear on the bill where Alexander Hamilton — a founding father and Treasury Secretary to President George Washington — now appears. Hamilton will reportedly remain on the bill, but in a diminished way.

The $10 note was selected for a redesign in 2013, mainly to protect against counterfeiting threats. But it seems Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew is taking the revamp as a chance to finally put a female face on a piece of currency. The new bill will be unveiled in 2020, marking the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote.

In a statement, Lew said that dollar bills are a way for America to communicate “who we are and what we stand for.” They have long been a way to “honor our past and express our values,” he added. There have only been a few changes to the faces on currency in the past —most recently in 1929, when Andrew Jackson replaced Grover Cleveland on the $20 note. “I’m proud that the new 10 will be the first bill in more than a century to feature the portrait of a woman,” Lew said.

The woman whose face lands on the $10 is up the discretion of Lew, but the Treasury is asking the American public to weigh in at town hall meetings and via the hashtag #theNew10, which is being used to collect suggestions. Lew wants the woman to be “a champion for our inclusive democracy.” Another requirement is that she be dead.

One particularly interesting moment was when President Clinton’s second Treasury Secretary, Rubin, argued to Sandberg that social media was one of the primary causes of political disfunction in the United States today. Said Rubin:

The fundamental challenge for our country is having effective government–and I’m not going to get invited to the next panel after I say what I’m about to say–I think social media plays an enormous role in public opinion. And I think it’s become to some extent a conductor of ideology, an echo chamber. The converse could be if those who had responsibility in the area of social media, whoever they may be, could find a way to engage the American people in recognizing that we must have effective government, whatever your views may be on issues. We should insist that our elected leaders should be committed to effective governance and to principled compromise to find common ground across divides.

Indeed, the overarching theme of the wide-ranging discussion between the former heads of the Treasury Department was political dysfunction. All three agreed that on paper, the United States has the best prospects of any country in the world, rich or emerging. The one thing holding the United States back was it’s inability to, as Geithner put it, “find some room for principled pragmatic compromise.”

The three former Treasury Secretaries, one Republican and two Democratic, agreed on the major challenges facing the U.S., including income inequality, slow growth, and the threat of climate change. In terms of public policy, all three concurred that the best way to put the U.S. on a good economic footing was to reform entitlements, invest in infrastructure, and work to fix America’s K-12 education system.

Paulson, the lone Republican on the panel, argued that addressing climate change, in particular, will require reframing the argument. He said that many people in his party are reluctant to acknowledge climate change as a problem because doing so would recognize the need for government. But what his fellow Republicans fail to recognize, is that failing to act is “setting us up for bigger government” down the road. When environmental disasters strike, it will be big government that ultimately comes to the rescue.

Even when it comes to the issue of economic competition with China, the former secretaries were sanguine, arguing that the United States biggest economic competitor is the United States itself.

U.S. Treasury nominee Weiss withdraws from consideration

(REUTERS) – Antonio Weiss, an investment banker who was a controversial nominee for a top post at the U.S. Treasury Department, has decided to withdraw from consideration, the White House said on Monday.

Liberal lawmakers, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, fiercely opposed Weiss’s nomination to the top Treasury domestic finance job because of his work for investment bank Lazard, which they viewed as proof of a revolving door between Wall Street and the U.S. government.

Weiss will instead become a senior adviser to U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, a position that does not requireSenate confirmation. The White House said it would begin a new search for a candidate for the domestic finance job.

“I am disappointed that Antonio will not have the opportunity to serve as under secretary, but I understand his request not to be re-nominated,” Lew said in a statement. “I continue to believe that the opposition to his nomination was not justified.”

White House spokeswoman Jennifer Friedman said Weiss made the decision to withdraw from consideration to avoid the “distraction” of the Senate confirmation process.

Weiss’s decision represents a considerable victory for Warren, who has become a rising star of the Democratic Party and pushed her colleagues in a more populist direction.

In recent weeks, she also pressured her party to fight Republican-led efforts to scale back the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial oversight law.

Warren and other lawmakers criticized Weiss’s background at Lazard, where he worked on high-profile deals that involved tax “inversions.” The Obama administration wants to prevent these deals, which involve U.S. companies moving their tax domiciles abroad to get lower rates.

Washington closes out last big position in Wall Street bailout

(REUTERS) – The United States closed out its last big investment taken on during a 2008 bailout of U.S. banks and automakers, selling its remaining shares in the former financing arm of General Motors, the U.S. Treasury said on Friday.

The U.S. Treasury made deals to sell about 55 million shares in Ally Financial for $1.3 billion, which a Treasury official said was organized to take advantage of strong stock prices seen in the last few days.

Shares in Ally Financial, which was formerly known as GMAC, rose 3.7% in Friday morning trading.

Treasury’s sale of the shares leaves taxpayer investments in the financial industry at less than $1 billion, spread out among 35 small community banks, said Timothy Bowler, a deputy assistant secretary at the Treasury, in a telephone call with journalists.

In 2008, during a financial crisis and profound recession, Washington bailed out a host of banks, big and small, as well as automakers General Motors and Chrysler. As of Wednesday, taxpayers had spent $426 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Program signed into law by former President George W. Bush.

Taxpayers have recovered almost all of their TARP investments, losing money on automakers but turning a profit on the financial sector bailout.

The TARP program also pumped money into housing programs, and continues to do so.

Antonio Weiss’s nomination to become the Treasury Department’s next Under Secretary for Domestic Finance has generated a bitter, personal fight, pitting Wall Street supporters against progressive reformers. At issue is Weiss’s lifelong career as a Wall Street banker and whether this qualifies him for the position, which, among other things, oversees financial reform, consumer protection, and domestic economic policy. Supporters of Mr. Weiss insist that his Wall Street experience will serve him well in this position, and somewhat humorously try to prove his Main Street credentials by pointing to the fact that he is a publisher of the “progressive” Paris Review. How’s that for a Man of the People?

I am hardly one to think that people who work on Wall Street should be disqualified from government jobs. Earlier in my career, I spent seven years working at the New York Stock Exchange. The understanding of equity markets and securities regulation which I obtained in that job were highly valuable to me in later positions as Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the U.S. Treasury Department and Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Obviously, we do not want to bar people from government just because they worked in the financial sector. But that is not the argument of Weiss’s critics. The real question is greater diversity in Obama’s appointments because it sure seems like the Wall Street Democrats are in charge. Let’s face it, most of this Administration’s financial appointments have not pushed for fundamental change in the way Wall Street operates. And the few that have — notably the CFTC’s Gary Gensler — have been unceremoniously escorted to the door when their terms were up. Indeed, two of the most reform-minded of all the sitting regulators are Tom Hoenig and Jeremiah Norton, who serve, respectively, as Vice-Chair and board member of the FDIC. Hoenig and Norton are known for their tough positions against too-big-to-fail and higher capital requirements for big Wall Street institutions. Ironically, they were proposed to the Administration by the Senate Republican Leadership.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has said “enough is enough.” As a former regulator who served in both the Bush and Obama Administration, I would agree that Wall Street perspectives too heavily dominate internal policy discussions and that a greater range of viewpoints is needed. For instance, why can’t we have a community banker to fill one of the two vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board? Why can’t we have a financial reformer like Tom Hoenig or Jeremiah Norton to fill the other? For that matter, why can’t we have a consumer advocate as Under Secretary for Domestic Finance? There would still be plenty of people among this Administration’s appointees to bring Wall Street perspectives to the table. But it’s a big world out there and decision-making would be greatly enhanced with the addition of those who are capable of understanding life west of the Hudson and south of the Potomac.

The other troubling aspect of the Weiss nomination is the fact that his firm, Lazard, will pay him some $20 million in stock and deferred compensation once he assumes office. He would not get such a payout if he were to leave for another firm. This is a common Wall Street practice, and the industry defends it by saying it encourages highly talented and experienced financial executives to take government jobs. But such individuals are not joining the government to run the Peace Corp. They are assuming positions where their decisions could have a beneficial impact on their former employers. Only in the Wonderland of Wall Street logic could one argue that this looks like anything other than a bribe. Once upon a time, part of the nobility of joining public service was the willingness to make the financial sacrifice. We want people entering public service because they want to serve the public. Frankly, if they need a $20 million incentive, I’d rather they stay away.

If Antonio Weiss really wants to serve his country, perhaps the first thing he should do is decline the big payout. And if the Obama Administration really wants broader support for this nomination, perhaps they should package it with a few Main Street candidates – like a community banker and a financial reformer – to serve on the Federal Reserve Board. I have no doubt that Wall Street’s perspectives would continue to be heard in the marbled halls of government, but at least they would be balanced by those who worry less about Wall Street interests and more about the rest of the country which Wall Street (and our government) are supposed to serve.

Sheila Bair is a Fortune contributor. She was Chair of the FDIC from 2006 to 2011.

Geithner testimony brings back memories of AIG’s bad old days

Tuesday marked the first time former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has ever testified in court about the financial crisis bailouts.

The former New York Federal Reserve chief took the stand on Tuesday in federal claims court in Washington to describe the decisions leading up to the original $85 billion bailout of American International Group. He discussed in depth the events of September 2008, when the government took over some 80% of the insurance company at the height of the financial crisis.

Geithner’s testimony is part of a shareholder lawsuit against the U.S. government that claims that AIG’s AIG bailout was unfair, overly punitive, and overstepped the Fed’s legal authority. The lawsuit pits the federal government against former longtime AIG CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, who was AIG’s largest shareholder at the time of the crisis through his Starr International Corp.

The case will be decided by U.S. Judge Thomas Wheeler in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington. There’s no jury, which may have played a role in how the much-criticized case got this far.

Anyone who remembers much about the financial crisis would think Greenberg and his powerhouse trial attorney David Boies are nuts for attempting to suggest AIG got a raw deal in what was definitively the least popular bailout in America. But after Geithner’s testimony on Tuesday afternoon, they don’t look so crazy anymore.

Geithner spent much of his time on the stand walking back boasts he had previously made about how tough the government had been on AIG in his book, Stress Test: Reflections of Financial Crises, as well as in plenty of speeches and interviews over the past six years.

All that time and effort Geithner spent as Treasury Secretary—where part of his job was to convince the public that the federal government put taxpayers’ interests first, particularly with the much-maligned AIG bailout—is now helping Starr International build a case that the government was out to get AIG, shareholders be damned.

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice needs Geithner to help them demonstrate that the AIG bailout was appropriate, especially considering the alternative would have been to walk away and leave AIG, Starr, and Greenberg to fend for themselves in bankruptcy court, where they might have fared worse.

If the government loses, the taxpayers could end up owing Starr International, Greenberg, and other shareholders in the class-action suit more than $40 billion. (The total AIG bailout, which topped $180 billion, has since been repaid.)

Geithner started his testimony calmly answering questions posed by Boies in grammatically complete sentences, not his strength under pressure. For example, he explained why his team set different interest rates on different bailouts to different Wall Street banks and AIG.

He also said for the umpteenth time that he considered the failure of AIG potentially catastrophic to a financial system in freefall.

But Geithner was not as steady later in the day, when Boies asked him if he had ever said the federal government “wiped out” AIG shareholders in the bailout. Geithner answered that while he may have said that, “it wasn’t completely true because the equity holders were still provided with a very substantial benefit.”

Later in the day, Boies asked Geithner whether he considered Citigroup C and Bank of America BAC insolvent during the height of the financial crisis, trying to make the point that the two banks were in as bad shape as AIG was but nevertheless got better deals. He pointed to preparation notes that Geithner had made to write his book, where he said: “Certainly Citigroup and Bank of America were insolvent.”

Geithner tried to clarify on the stand that the banks “certainly needed substantial support. If people want to say that’s insolvency, maybe it is.”

In one of the funniest moments of the trial, Boies asked Geithner about a phone call he received from his client, Maurice “Hank” Greenberg on Sept. 15 2008. Greenberg wanted a “seat at the table” in discussions about how to help AIG. Geithner declined.

Boies asked Geithner if he held Greenberg in “high regard.” His response? “I [pause] I had a [pause] a high regard but I would say a complicated regard for him. Just to be honest about it.”

Former Treasury Secretary Geithner defends AIG bailout in court

(REUTERS) Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Tuesday defended the government’s rescue of American International Group Inc in September 2008, saying it was necessary to prevent the country from plunging into a second Great Depression.

Geithner’s comments came in testimony in the trial of a lawsuit brought by Hank Greenberg, a major AIG shareholder until the bailout and the company’s chief executive until 2005. He contends the terms of the government $85 billion loan to AIG cheated its shareholders.

While few legal experts expect Greenberg’s lawsuit to be successful, it has served to reopen a fraught chapter in American economic history and the outcome could shape how regulators respond to future crises.

Greenberg’s lawyer, star litigator David Boies, spent much of Tuesday morning introducing emails Geithner wrote and received that discussed AIG’s deteriorating condition when he served as president of the New York Federal Reserve in the chaotic days around the initial bailout offer.

Many of the emails were sent by other New York Fed officials after midnight, underscoring the round-the-clock effort the government undertook to contain the 2008 financial crisis.

Boies has sought to portray the government as making ad hoc decisions that unfairly punished AIG and is arguing that the terms the New York Fed required as part of the bailout, including a nearly 80 percent stake in the company, were illegal.

Later on Tuesday, Geithner later testified that some of the terms, including the high interest rate, were in part based on a proposal from JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc, but he said he could not remember analyzing the basis for the interest rate. The proposal came from a term sheet for a possible private sector rescue, but that rescue never materialized.

The exchange grew testier as the afternoon wore on, as Boies tried to push Geithner to say the Fed had worked to avoid an AIG shareholder vote in connection with the rescue, or that regulators had failed to follow up on legitimate private sector efforts to help AIG. Geithner responded that he did not know about efforts related to shareholder votes and that he would have seriously considered any realistic proposals from private investors.

Greenberg through his Starr International Co, which was AIG’s largest shareholder with a 12 percent stake, sued in 2011 seeking more than $25 billion in damages.

Geithner took the stand on the seventh day of the trial, one day after his predecessor as Treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, told the same courtroom that AIG shareholders were singled out for punishment but that such terms were necessary to protect against others taking reckless risks.

On Tuesday, Boies spent time reading aloud comments Geithner made in a book he wrote about the 2008 financial crisis called “Stress Test,” focusing on the consequences AIG’s collapse could have on the broader financial system.

“It sounds like you are quoting me,” Geithner said on multiple occasions after hearing a passage from Boies, who cited the book with enough frequency that the judge overseeing the case asked if he should go get his own copy at Barnes & Noble .

The trial is unfolding before Judge Thomas Wheeler of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, who will decide the case.

Geithner, who appeared relaxed but whose answers grew shorter and more deliberate later in the afternoon, did attempt to walk back some comments he had made in the past about the AIG bailout, including statements that the insurance company’s shareholders had been “effectively wiped out” and that the government had essentially “nationalized”AIG.

That was “not the most precise language,” he said, to laughter in the courtroom.

Geithner is expected to continue his testimony on Wednesday, when government lawyers will have an opportunity to question him.

Lew to CEOs: It’s time to step up

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew says American CEOs need to “stop looking backwards” and think about “taking some risks” in a new interview with Fortune Magazine. Speaking at the Treasury Department in Washington, Lew discussed confidence, businesses relations with the Obama Administration and Russian sanctions. Here is an edited version of that interview:

Fortune: If the economy is improving, how come people aren’t feeling better?

Jack Lew: It takes a while not just to see that things are getting better, but also to have the confidence that they’ll stay better, so I don’t think it surprising that after the worst recession since the Great Depression it’s taken a little bit of time for people to realize that.

What message would you have to CEOs of the Fortune 500, and are you concerned that profits in the Fortune 500 are so robust while employment is lagging?

It’s important for firms have the confidence to invest in plants, equipment and people. They have to see the order books and profits to warrant that. We’re going to need some of that money to come off the sidelines. I think some of our business executives are concerned that they don’t want to get over-extended after the terrible experience they had with the recession. Each player has to play their role. Government has a responsibility that is a very important, and over the last six months we’ve seen the political debate in Washington settle down. But they [CEOs] also have their responsibilities; they have to look at what’s at the heart of the American economy and what’s made it the envy of the world. It’s a combination of innovation and entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship means taking some risks and putting resources behind them. As confidence picks up, everyone’s going to have to stop looking backwards and look forward. And the future of the American economy is still very strong. When I travel around the world what I hear now isn’t the same I might’ve heard two or three years ago: I’m not hearing, ‘how did you cause the financial crisis?’ I’m hearing ‘how are you so resilient, how did you bounce back so well?’

Is your administration a business-friendly administration?

I think we are. I talk to CEOs all the time and I think they know that we actually want them to do well, and that we don’t view this as being an adversarial relationship. We’ve gone through a number of important policy processes in this administration that have been challenging. Financial reform was a once-in-a-generation experience that had a substantial amount of friction early on. CEOs want us to get to the finish line. They want to know what the final rules of the road are again. I think they know we listen to them. That doesn’t mean we always do what they want.

Are our economic sanctions and pressure on Russia working and forcing Putin to change course?

I think that the economic sanctions that we put in place have sent a very clear message that was received and understood everywhere. In almost every measure he has suffered from uncertainty and the imposition of sanctions since the invasion of Crimea and the activities surrounding Ukraine. Look at the Russian stock market and it’s down the Russian exchange rate and it’s down, look at the flight of capital from Russia, it’s at very high levels. Russia came into the year with a very low rate of growth it’s now teetering around zero and they know that with another round of sanctions it is almost certain to go negative. So I think these are factors that are part of the calculus. Remember that the purpose of the sanctions is not to hurt the people of Russia; the purpose is to change the decisions that the leaders make. We’ve made it clear we don’t want to impose more sanctions, but we are prepared to do so.